The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

by Steven Pinker

Bertrand Russell wrote, “Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.” For intellectuals today, many of those convictions are about psychology and social relations. I will refer to those convictions as the Blank Slate: the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.

The chapters in this part of the book (Part I) are about the ascendance of the Blank Slate in modern intellectual life, and about the new view of human nature and culture that is beginning to challenge it. In succeeding parts we will witness the anxiety evoked by this challenge (Part II) and see how the anxiety may be assuaged (Part III). Then I will show how a richer conception of human nature can provide insight into language, thought, social life, and morality (Part IV) and how it can clarify controversies on politics, violence, gender, childrearing, and the arts (Part V). Finally I will show how the passing of the Blank Slate is less disquieting, and in some ways less revolutionary, than it first appears (Part VI).

“BLANK SLATE” IS a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa—literally, “scraped tablet.” It is commonly attributed to the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), though in fact he used a different metaphor. Here is the famous passage from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.

Book2, Chapter 1, page 26

The doctrines of the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine—or, as philosophers call them, empiricism, romanticism, and dualism—are logically independent, but in practice they are often found together.

Here's a little table I made Concept Philosophy Opposite Proponent Blank Slate Empiricism Rationalism Aristotle / Locke Noble Savage Romanticism Enlightenment Rousseau Ghost in the Machine dualism monism Descartes

Here are five ideas from the cognitive revolution that have revamped how we think and talk about minds. The first idea: The mental world can be grounded in the physical world by the concepts of information, computation, and feedback.